On Sept. 24, 2005, in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, a school bus is submerged in post-Katrina flooding. Half of the city's public school infrastructure was damaged beyond repair. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Features » August 28, 2015

10 Years After Katrina, New Orleans’ All-Charter School System Has Proven a Failure

Test scores tell one story, and residents tell another. A three-month investigation by In These Times reveals the cracks in the education reform narrative.

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Karran Harper Royal was pleased to be invited to join a citizens’ committee in 2006 to plan for the future of New Orleans schools. But she soon became disillusioned, convinced that the state didn’t really want citizen input—it already had a plan and was simply seeking approval.

Ninth grade was nothing like what Darrius Jones expected. Jones, 14, imagined that with high school would come more independence. Instead, he felt like he was being treated like a kid. “You had to sit a certain way,” he recalls. “You couldn’t lean, or have your chair back.” Jones says he stepped out of line once—an actual line on the floor of the hallway, which students were supposed to follow—and was sent to detention.

It was the beginning of the 2012 school year, and Jones was in the first class of students at Carver Collegiate Academy, a brand-new charter school in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward. Like a public school, it is funded by taxpayers and open to anyone. But as a charter, it is managed independently by a board of directors that can do its own hiring and firing, write its own policies and teach according to its own philosophy. In the case of Carver Collegiate, that philosophy is one of “no excuses”—strict rules and swift discipline.

Carver is part of New Orleans’ Recovery School District (RSD), the first all-charter school district in the nation. In the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana opted to completely overhaul the city’s failing public schools by putting them on the open market. Ten years later, cities and states around the country have embarked on their own charter-school experiments and are watching New Orleans closely, laser-focused on outcomes.

Test scores have improved, according to two major reports that examine academic achievement over the past nine years. On Katrina’s 10th anniversary, RSD is being held up as a national model. The graduation rate has risen from 56 percent to 73 percent. Last year, 63 percent of students in grades 3-8 scored basic or above on state standardized tests, up from 33 percent.

But by other measures, the RSD suffers. In These Times received an advance copy of research conducted for the Network for Public Education (NPE) by University of Arizona researchers Francesca López and Amy Olson. The study compared charters in Louisiana, the majority of which are in New Orleans, to Louisiana public schools, controlling for factors like race, ethnicity, poverty and whether students qualified for special education. On eighth-grade reading and math tests, charter-school students performed worse than their public-school counterparts by enormous margins—2 to 3 standard deviations.

The researchers found that the gap between charter and public school performance in Louisiana was the largest of any state in the country. And Louisiana’s overall scores were the fourth-lowest in the nation.

“You can say until you’re blue in the face that this should be a national model, but this is one of the worst-performing districts in one of the worst-performing states,” says NPE board member Julian Vasquez Heilig, an education professor at California State Sacramento.

However, test scores, high or low, are only a piece of the story. In a three-month investigation, In These Times interviewed teachers, parents and students to find out how they feel about the charterization of public education in New Orleans.

Community members mourned the closures of public schools that had served as neighborhood hubs. Students at no-excuses charters described feeling like they were in prison, or bootcamp. Teachers felt demoralized, like they didn’t have a voice in the classroom. Parents complained about a lack of black teachers. In interview after interview, people said the same thing: The system doesn’t put children’s needs first.

A swift takeover

Before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans public schools were struggling. The graduation rate was 18 points below the national average. Sixty-eight percent of seventh and eighth graders were testing below basic proficiency in English, 70 percent in math.

After the hurricane hit in August 2005, the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) laid off some 3,000 staff and 4,000 teachers. More than half its physical infrastructure was damaged beyond repair, and its tax base was displaced.

The state of Louisiana then collaborated with corporate education reformers in the most expansive overhaul ever seen in the history of public education.

In November, the state legislature raised the bar for public schools to avoid takeover. With parts of the city still underwater, 107 of New Orleans’ 128 public schools were suddenly in the hands of the all-charter Recovery School District (RSD)—a two-year-old district that previously contained only five schools.

“Basically, we became the dog that caught the bus,” said Leslie Jacobs, a former member of the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the woman widely known as the brains behind RSD, in an interview with the Washington Monthly. “We had nothing: no schools, no buildings, no cafeteria workers, no buses.”

What they did have was the backing of the national “education reform” movement, which pushes charters and high-stakes testing. With the public-school bureaucracy out of the way, powerhouses in the reform movement, such as the Walton and Gates foundations, came calling. In a 2006 interview with Education Next magazine, Mayor Ray Nagin put it this way: “They said, ‘Look, you set up the right environment, we will fund, totally fund, brand-new schools for the city of New Orleans.’ ”

And they did.

“In sharp contrast to the glacial pace with which the levees were repaired and the electricity grid brought back online, the auctioning-off of New Orleans’ school system took place with military speed and precision,” writes Naomi Klein in her landmark 2007 book The Shock Doctrine. She holds up the takeover as a prime example of “disaster capitalism”: “orchestrated raids on the public sphere in the wake of catastrophic events, combined with the treatment of disasters as exciting market opportunities.”

Today, RSD oversees 70 percent of the public schools in New Orleans. OPSB still contains 16 schools, the majority of which are now charters.

Each of RSD’s charter schools is like a school district unto itself. Although RSD regulates some things—for instance, that schools have open enrollment—charters are otherwise autonomous. They have their own boards, which set rules like length of school day, dress code and hiring practices, and their own management. In Louisiana and many other states, the board must be nonprofit. But management can be either nonprofit or for-profit.

Other states have followed Louisiana’s lead. In 2012, after Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder put Detroit under emergency management, the manager closed 16 city schools and handed 15 to the Education Achievement Authority, which received millions from the likes of the Kellogg and Gates foundations. In 2013, Tennessee created the Achievement School District to take over the state’s worst-performing schools; the district now runs 27 Memphis schools, 20 of them charters.

Others are sure to follow, as long as the narrative of charter success holds. Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared, in 2010, that Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”

An anchor lost

“The vast majority of public schools closed by RSD in the past five years were in poor and working class, African-American neighborhoods,” the complaint says. “Many of the schools existed for over a hundred years before being closed and had been attended by multiple generations in one family. These schools employed teachers and administrators who have taught in our communities for decades—staff who hold community knowledge, understand the hardships that face our students, and pass down our shared values. … After everything that we lost in Katrina, it has been devastating to lose our schools as well.”

Karran Harper Royal, a co-author of the complaint, is a former OPSB parent who was active in education politics before the storm. She was pleased to be invited to join a citizens’ committee in 2006 to plan for the future of New Orleans schools. But Royal soon became disillusioned, convinced that the state didn’t really want citizen input—it already had a plan and was simply seeking approval.

On a muggy afternoon in June, Royal drives me around the neighborhood where her great-grandmother lived. As a girl, Royal spent a lot of time here.

Most of the residents were poor and black, and most attended George Washington Carver High School in the Lower Ninth Ward. Although Royal went to a different school, many people she grew up with went there: friends, cousins, her husband

Most of the project’s residents were poor and black, and most attended George Washington Carver High School in the Lower Ninth Ward. Although Royal went to a different school, many people she grew up with went there: friends, cousins, her husband.

Carver was one of the “academically unacceptable” public schools transferred to RSD after Katrina. Though its test scores were low, locals nonetheless took pride in it. An award-winning example of mid-century modern architecture, Carver had a soaring auditorium and large cafeteria built to create a sense of a village. Its daycare center and music program were renowned citywide. Carver had a strong alumni network and served as an anchor for the neighborhood, bringing people together for football games and marching band performances. Its computer lab was an important resource for locals.

“Was it the best school in the city? No,” says Royal. “But did it produce great people? Yes, it did. Were there some people at Carver who didn’t make it? That’s true, too. Carver was in the middle of a very poor community.”

After the storm, RSD demolished Carver and built a modular campus in its place—portable classrooms connected by wooden boardwalks. Some alumni and community members formed George Washington Carver Charter School Association in a bid to charter the school themselves, but their three applications to RSD were turned down.

Instead, in 2012, RSD turned the school over to Collegiate Academies, considered a leading light of the charter movement. Its flagship school, Sci Academy, had opened in New Orleans in 2008 and seen significant gains in math and English within two years. Sci Academy was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which awarded founder and CEO Ben Marcovitz a $1 million check.

Collegiate Academies is one of several growing charter networks in New Orleans modeled on what’s often referred to as the no-excuses approach. Disproportionately used in poor and minority communities, the model is characterized by longer school days (and years), frequent testing, and strict routines and behavioral codes enforced by demerit systems. Students can earn detention—and, eventually, suspension—for relatively small infractions. In the 2012-13 school year, the three Collegiate Academies schools had the highest out-of-school suspension rates in New Orleans. Sci Academy suspended 58 percent of its students, and the two charters opened on the former Carver campus, Carver Prep and Carver Collegiate, suspended 61 and 69 percent of their students, respectively.

There isn’t yet a robust body of research on whether the no-excuses model encourages academic success. One widely cited analysis does show that children who were randomly selected to attend “no excuses” charter schools outperformed peers who weren’t.

But other research suggests that the approach produces good rule followers but poor critical thinkers. Princeton doctoral student Joanne Golann spent 18 months conducting fieldwork in a no-excuses charter school in a Northeastern city, interviewing close to one hundred students, teachers and administrators. She found that “students, in many cases, are taught to monitor themselves, hold back their opinions and defer to authority, rather than take initiative, assert themselves and interact with ease with their teachers.” She concluded that these “schools produce worker-learners to close the achievement gap.”

Rebellion in the ranks

When Rowena McCormick Robinson attended an orientation for prospective Sci Academy parents, it seemed promising. Officials assured her that the school offered advanced placement classes, extracurriculars and an atmosphere of strict discipline. The kind of place where her bright and quiet 14-year-old son, Russell, would thrive.

But within weeks of starting, the teenager, who normally woke up for school on his own, didn’t want to get out of bed. “I hate going there,” he told his mom. “It’s like prison.” When she heard about the rules the school was enforcing—rules about the way the kids had to sit, the way they raised their hand—she was furious.

These kids might be rowdy, she says, and many might come from dysfunctional homes, but they weren’t that bad. She thought it was wrong that so many were being punished as though they were delinquents.

Some of the students felt the same. Darrius Jones, who had been given detention for stepping out of line at Carver Collegiate, simply transferred schools. But in 2013, other kids at Carver Prep and Carver Collegiate started talking about a revolt. On Nov. 18, 2013, nearly 100 students walked out. They printed a list of 13 concerns, including, “We are learning material that we already learned in middle school” and “We want a discipline policy that doesn’t suspend kids for every little thing.”

Ben Marcovitz, CEO of Collegiate Academies, met with students and made a plan for reforms. Last year, Collegiate Academies launched a network-wide program focused on restorative discipline methods, instructing teachers to assume a student has just forgotten a rule and to take time to explain it. “We dropped our suspension rates from 56 to 12 percent in one year,” he says.

But the no-excuses approach shows no signs of going out of fashion. The rapidly growing charter network Knowledge is Power, for example, runs seven of RSD’s 80 charter schools under a no-excuses model, along with 176 more in “educationally underserved” communities across the country.

Younger, whiter and non-union

Another flashpoint in the Carver student protests was the racial makeup of the teaching staff. “There are no black teachers,” the complaint read. “The only black role models we have at the school are janitors, cafeteria workers, secretaries, security guards, and coaches.”

That bothered Rowena, too. The teachers at Sci, she says, were “young and white” and didn’t understand anything about the culture. “There are a few who really care,” she says, “but they are thrown into this without knowing what they’re getting into.”

Collegiate made an effort to increase teacher diversity after the walkout, going from an 8 percent black teaching force to 30 percent.

Overall, however, New Orleans’ teaching landscape has shifted dramatically since Katrina. Before the storm, 73 percent of Orleans Parish’s classroom teachers were black. Nearly half of the teachers had been more than 15 years of experience. They were under a collective bargaining agreement with the United Teachers of New Orleans, an American Federation of Teachers affiliate.

After the OPSB layoffs, Teach for America (TFA), a nonprofit that trains college grads to teach in underprivileged communities, swept in to fill the gap, tripling the number of new recruits going to New Orleans.

The most recent teacher data available, from 2013, shows that the New Orleans teaching force is now 54 percent black, while the student body is 87 percent. The teachers are more likely than before the storm to come from an alternative certification program, such as TeachNOLA or TFA. RSD teachers average seven years of experience, OPSB charter teachers 12, and OPSB public school teachers 17. Only a few OPSB schools are unionized, and RSD is entirely non-union (although some organizing campaigns are underway).

Do these things matter? A 2005 study by Swarthmore researcher Thomas S. Dee found that teachers of a different race than a student were significantly more likely to evaluate that student as disruptive, inattentive and rarely completing homework.

Certainly, among New Orleans residents interviewed by In These Times, there was a sense that the loss of experienced black teachers has been detrimental to black students. Rowena’s mother, Roberta, taught art in a parochial school in Louisiana. “When I was a teacher, I was parenting,” she says. “What helped them so much was me being able to meet them where they were, with whatever they lacked, or needed extra. … These teachers, they’re not ready. For whatever reason, white folk fear black folks so much. They come in with the fear.”

A large body of research shows that teacher experience has a positive impact on student learning, especially after a teacher gets through the steep learning curve of the first three years.

Teacher retention has been a challenge for charter schools across the country. RSD charter schools in New Orleans have an average annual turnover of 27 percent. An analysis of National Center for Education Statistics by the University of Arizona’s López and Olson found that 46 percent of charter school teachers in Louisiana reported plans to leave, compared to 6 percent of public school teachers.

One of the main reasons that teachers leave a post, according to Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies teacher turnover, is the issue of “voice.” Teachers want to feel like they have a say in the classroom.

This was what bothered Kelly Pickett, one of the young, white teachers who started teaching in New Orleans after the storm. She’d been a chef for 10 years before going back to school at 28 to get her bachelor’s in early childhood education. Her first teaching post was in a first-grade classroom at Arthur Ashe Elementary, an RSD charter with a no-excuses approach. She’d known it was a strict school, but hadn’t fully understood how strict. She describes the experience as “horrible.”

The philosophy is “all about control,” she says. Teachers were instructed to keep students in the “STARR” position: Sit straight, Track the speaker with your eyes, And be Responsive and Respectful. Teachers had to post students’ test scores on the classroom walls. Bar charts showed where each student stood in comparison to the rest of the class and how much they needed to improve to raise the average so the whole class could win candy or a pizza party. The scores also helped determine teachers’ pay.

Pickett had to enforce a complicated system of warnings and shout-outs on a behavioral stoplight at the front of the classroom. A student starts at green; two warnings move her to yellow; two more, she’s at red and out of the classroom. Positive “shout-outs,” move students in the other direction. Shout-outs are for things like helping a classmate or paying attention, and warnings for things like sitting improperly (not in STARR position) or for interrupting during a lesson.

Pickett disagreed with the rules, but had no choice but to enforce them.

“The kids are smart. Really smart,” Pickett says. “Some of them find their rewards in this system, others see no point and act out deliberately to get out. They know exactly how to derail the system. I literally have to scream at them, and I hate it.”

After one semester, Pickett quit.

Some are more welcome than others

In the high-stakes education system in New Orleans, a no-excuses approach applies not just to individual students, but to schools. Those that fail to boost test scores can and do lose their charters.

According to a recent survey of 30 principals from both RSD and OPSB schools, many feel pressure to compete for the right kind of students. The 2015 report, funded by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, found that about a third used means to screen out undesirable students (“creaming,” as the authors described it), even though this is technically not allowed under RSD’s open-admissions policy. One school stopped advertising open spots and enrolled 100 fewer kids, forgoing funding, rather than attract “less-capable students.” In other words, the report stated, “Some schools in New Orleans preferred to remain under-enrolled than to attract students who might hurt their test scores. … They viewed these practices as just part of their effort to create a coherent school culture or as a necessity for survival in a market-based environment.”

Among these practices have been illegal attempts to exclude special education students. This spring, Lagniappe Academies, an elementary school in New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, lost its charter license after the state board of education found that administrators had deliberately screened out special needs students by refusing them services and creating a Do Not Call list of families they didn’t want to return the following year. Last year, Louisiana settled a suit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of 10 special-needs students in New Orleans schools—seven of which were charters—alleging that they’d been denied services and unfairly disciplined.

No-excuses charter schools around the country have been accused of disciplining underperforming students in order to push them out. Most deny that claim, but what’s clear is that their strict demerit systems lead to high expulsion rates.

Even if they’re not expelled, students leave New Orleans’ RSD schools at unusually high rates. At 61 percent, the graduation rate is the second-lowest in Louisiana. What happens to the other 39 percent? Only about 3 percent are listed as dropouts; the rest are listed as having switched schools or left the state. But no one really knows for sure. There’s no centralized database to track individual kids from K-12. Youth advocates say this makes it easy for kids to fall through the cracks. Fifteen percent of New Orleans youth ages 16 to 19 aren’t working or in school, 6 points above the national average.

Rebuilding community power

The 10th anniversary of Katrina has sparked renewed interest in the New Orleans model. A recent Chicago Tribune editorial yearned for a hurricane to strike Chicago so that it, too, could have a “reset” to do away with “restrictive mandates” from government and demands from teachers unions.

But the anniversary has also brought together the budding grassroots movement that's fighting against the larger push for corporate education reform.

In early August, Kristen Buras, author of Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance, helped organize a two-day conference in New Orleans on community-centered education research. Social justice advocates, educators and union leaders from 10 cities around the country came together out of concern about a loss of community control over schools. Most, not coincidentally, are from urban school districts with high poverty rates and large populations of students of color.

Many who have seen charters replace traditional public schools report the same problems that New Orleans residents describe: closures of public schools that held neighborhoods together, younger and less experienced teachers, the loss of union jobs, experimental teaching practics that can be rigid or harsh, cherrypicking of students and rapid teacher burn-out.

In an email to In These Times, New York University education professor and NPE founder Diane Ravitch summarized the emerging, less-rosy narrative of the New Orleans model, “That model requires firing all the teachers, no matter their performance, allowing them to reapply for a job, and replacing many of them with inexperienced TFA recruits. That model requires wiping out public schools and replacing them with privately managed schools that set their own standards for admission, discipline, expulsion, and are financially opaque. These heavy-handed tactics require a suspension of democracy that would not be tolerated in a white suburb, but can be done to powerless urban districts where the children are black and Hispanic.”

The good news, says Buras, is that, “Community-based activists experiencing this model are starting to connect with one another. The narrative is starting to change.”

Sarah Cobarrubias, Ethan Corey and Karen Gwee contributed research and reporting to this article.

If that is the case FIRE THE CHARTER AND HIRE ANOTHER CHARTER...they are not only one company and they are STILL PUBLIC schools and they have to hire teachers that are STATE CERTIFIED...so MAYBE and that sounds like what it is...Louisiana needs to UPGRADE their teacher requirements NOT THE SCHOOLS AND STUDENTS. And you can't TEACH with disruptive students that RUN THE SCHOOL...you can't heal people when the inmates are running the asylum.

Schools today have no discipline and they have all over the country STUDENTS that are allowed to RUN THE SCHOOLS. They also have TEACHERS who are scared to death of the STUDENTS. Is it any wonder that PUBLIC SCHOOLS ARE NOT WORKING...they are HAMSTRUNG by fear of the CHILD REGULATIONS that thanks of Dr. Spock 60+ years ago, made children the center of the UNIVERSE...children with the WISDOM OF CHILDREN are running the WORLD...they all think they are SO SMART...there is a big difference in "smart" and "wisdom" they are not even CLOSE.

I truly get fed up with BRILLIANT CHILDREN....thank heavens my children are all grown and successful....they were abused. They grew up with SERIOUS DISCIPLINE and yes, they were FORCED TO GO TO SUNDAY SCHOOL EVERY SUNDAY.

Their friends were monitored and THANK HEAVENS I didn't have to deal with them living on the COMPUTER. I knew exactly who was influencing my children EVERY DAY ALL THE TIME. My job as their mother was to raise them until they were old enough to be on their own at 15. Up until then WAS I A SMOTHER MOTHER...probably. Am I sorry NOT!!

Posted by Sarah Yarbrough on 2016-11-05 10:13:53

I've read numerous article claiming Gentrification is the primary component of the improvement in schools. As the article pointed out, when normalized for race and economic status, the school are not performing well. Likewise, graduation rates are always the most insanely manipulated statistic. Having worked in an urban school in another state, I saw how blatantly the school manipulated the statistic. Students who dropped out received multiple home visits to "encourage" them to say they would be continuing school elsewhere. This allowed them to classify them as transferring out so it didn't count against the graduation rate. Likewise, student were allowed to take unsupervised online classes to make up for failed ones. It was not unusual to see seniors "makeup" two years worth of classes in their final semester of their senior year.The concept of charter may not be a failure, but the execution certainly has been. In our area, the mantra of "let the market rule" has resulted in a bankrupt public school system and charters that perform just as badly, but earn big profits for the owners. There emphasis is solely on marketing and minimizing costs, not on the welfare of their students. The fallacy that you can give public money to private companies and the will look out for the public interest should be obvious. Unfortunately, charter schools have become big profit center who lobby for unregulated access to the public purse. Charters need to be more heavily regulated than typical schools, not less.

Posted by Jon on 2016-06-07 12:28:22

Still doesn't make privatizing education the answer. Maybe they are out of control because they aren't engaged. Plus, this is hardly just 'urban' schools. It happens anywhere the principal thinks the job involves hiding in their office.

Posted by girlcousin on 2016-05-29 12:30:19

And you haven't seen a classroom in an inner city public school that is so out-of-control that no one learns. My son left teaching (high school science), because there was no back-up in the Administration. Many of these children have no discipline or routine at home. It was heartbreaking for my son to see them headed for the same powerless lives their parents lived. He had expensive equipment stolen with impunity. While he was dealing with a couple students who showed up high, another student in the back of the room threw a potted plant out an open window... which nearly hit security guards 2 stories down. When sent to the office, that student was told by the Principal, "if he did one more thing" he would be suspended. Huh? The system that was described has been very successful in L.A. schools and with kids that are in or headed for juvenile detention. We have these same desperate circumstances in Detroit. Respect for others comes from respect for oneself. Help these kids respect themselves and it will transform their attitude toward everything.

Posted by GetItRight4aChange on 2016-04-27 08:43:11

Sarah Carr's excellent book Hope Against Hope is I think a more accurate and nuanced view of the school situation in New Orleans. The system wasn't perfect pre-Katrina and it isn't perfect now. There are good things and bad things about both approaches. The children of New Orleans need us to continue to push for improvement of their education systems rather than criticize them as failures.

Posted by SkylinePigeon on 2016-03-19 17:22:39

Hello, I am a french documentary film maker, very interested on this topic. I'd like to get in touch with Colleen Kimmett to share about her article, how can we do that ?

Posted by Alexandra Kandy Longuet on 2016-01-05 05:56:29

How about parents who care? Or maybe get involved in their kids' lives? Where are all the fathers?

Posted by bowhowdy2 on 2015-12-20 23:24:37

What is disgraceful is the fact that the first priority after Katrina was to dismantle the public school system just to destroy the union. Not save the people. Not rebuilding the city. Destroying the union was the top priority.

I guess that they were fed up with the teachers union demanding resources to help students like modern technology, modern text books, special services for children who lag behind others, manageable class sizes, accountability from administrators, fair treatment of the students and faculty, certification requirements for teachers, and decent wages.

But making Bush's wealthy donors even richer was more important.

Posted by Skibby3 on 2015-12-20 10:05:35

Education Secretary Arne Duncan declared, in 2010, that Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.” What a shocking statement. How so very sad for these children. How is it that one man ...Bill Gates has such an interest in funding public and private eduction. Why are so-called intelligent people allowing this man to dictate education in America? Of course, it's because he has money, but it's pathetic. He has his claws in education everywhere -- Common Core, Catholic Schools, Jesuit Schools, Charter Schools...it's really unbelievable that one man would wield so much influence on the schools. My former Catholic School submitted to the Common Core and bowed down to State education. It is evil.

Posted by Carolyn C on 2015-12-19 01:47:21

It's been clear for a long time that charter schools succeed primarily by pushing out kids with special needs. (In New York City, charters often have half as many special needs kids.) You have to do an apples-to-apples comparison of test scores, and by that standard, the vast majority of them are worse than public schools that have experienced teachers (who are, yes, being paid properly).The thorny question should be: what do we do about public schools? How do we help them? What do we do when one student is acting out and ruining the educational experience of 25 other kids? What do we do about kids too immature to focus, who might succeed better if they worked at a job for a couple of years and then came back, but in the meantime are just acting out? These are the thorny issues. Charters are a distraction that the right-wing loves mainly because it allows them to undermine left-leaning union workers.

Posted by rvnc on 2015-12-18 07:04:40

I started and worked in a Charter School, it closed after 3 years. Good idea, very bad implementation in many cases. True educational reform will not happen because there is no profit motive. Some fairly easy common sense reforms would make a dramatic difference but you won't see them happen. With basically a model that is over 150 years old plus, I wonder why it does not work. Any real discussion about charters is pretty much closed off by both sides so I expect little real progress. The statistics, student body, test scores, and more are all cooked from both sides so no truth will shine in. But the money will be spent and the profits taken by some. Sad state of affairs for all.

Posted by marid on 2015-10-25 13:38:36

I am sure your story is completely true and a 7 year old understood all the factors involved.

Posted by marid on 2015-10-25 13:32:00

The respected Stanford CREDO study in 2014 found that -- nationally -- neatly 40% charters are worse than regular public schools, while fewer than 20% are any better, and that mainly because they tend to be selective. -- Edd Doerr (arlinc.org)

Posted by edddoerr on 2015-10-06 09:30:11

"without acknowledging the hardships we faced rebuilding a demolished system from scratch to accommodate returning children with little federal or state support"

Well that's the problem isn't it. A severely right wing culture electing a severely right wing government who withdrew support for education and has now given it away essentially to private for-profit organisations who instead of seeing children as people to be educated, they see them as a resource to be mined.

Which you support and argue for, because "we'll still be here trying to care for and educate our children as best we can", even though by your own admission you'd function a lot better with federal and state support instead of no support, or for profit charters filling in for support, yes?

Posted by Ceci Pipe on 2015-09-19 18:12:39

I'll tell you why--we aren't the audience elected officials are talking to. They are all congratulating Singer (vulture capitalist), DeVos (Sister of Erik Prince), Waltons (educating kids to be mute automatons content with whatever you 'give' them), and Gates (got a software package I can sell you for that charter school.....). These ALEC members are taking a victory lap for diverting money from public schools to the for-profit gateway drug of charter schools leading to private schools funded entirely with public money. It's all about the hedge funds profits, folks.

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-09-03 09:28:34

Actually, the test scores aren't even that consistently impressive. In Indiana they had to literally keep sending back a 'pet' charter schools for massaging until the charter got an increased 'grade.' http://hechingered.org/content....

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-09-03 09:24:07

Yes, and that 'different form' is no unions, no transparency and no school board. So in other words, tax money is diverted for what are essentially private schools--which do NOT take special needs kids. Why do you think the SPLC successfully sued NOLA schools for this discrimination? Charters get all the 'cream' and none of the work.

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-09-03 09:20:40

I can't disagree with you on those issues, they're obvious to everyone even if you don't have children in the system!

Posted by the_spiral on 2015-09-02 14:24:36

Charter schools are public schools, just in a different form.But using what criteria? As the article notes, the percentage of students graduating and passing the state tests have increased dramatically. It does say their math scores lag behind other schools, but that's not a fair comparison unless New Orleans schools used to be better than average, which I highly doubt.

Posted by Peter O. on 2015-08-31 10:39:19

The most important issue is the opinion of the locals. That being said, the criticisms are worthless. The kids don't like sitting up straight?!? There aren't as many black teachers?!?! Why not focus on great teachers- regardless of quota?! I live in Ohio. I was spat upon and sworn at as a seven year old kid crossing the picket line during a teacher's strike just because I wanted to attend school and get an education. Destroy the teacher's union through any means necessary and you will get smarter kids. The overall test scores are impressive. The complaints are hollow at best.

Posted by Mark Thompson on 2015-08-31 08:21:08

Kathy, well stated. States like louisiana want to kill public education. Left out are the kids of need.

Posted by R.j. Intindola on 2015-08-30 18:16:10

Yes, I do live here. Yes, I do pay attention although I have no children myself. I have lived in this public school district since 1989. It happens to have been one of the most well-run and successful as a public school. My friends and family who do or have had students here can say that the reorganization combined with the turnover of inexperienced teachers leads to a less than shining program. At every grade level the teachers are only here for a year or two. There is no method for parents who participate to do so beyond the exactly described conditions of the charter company. Make no mistake, these are companies which are here to turn a profit.

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Posted by carolyncastaneda on 2015-08-30 13:39:25

I'd be wary of the stats- between Katrina and current times, the tests have changed, and most comparisons are of immediate post-Katrina stats to current stats. It is unfair to everyone to compare 2006 scores to now, when in 2006 their city had just been ravaged. Yes, those were the last pre-RSD stats around, but it would be fairer to look at, say, 2002 scores. Granted, LA hasn't done a great job record-keeping those, so it's hard to compare, again.

Posted by kryten8 on 2015-08-30 11:01:35

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Thanks for the response. I didn't have an issue with the points you raised, just the headline. Like Eden Heilman of SPLC said recently, this is a bell that can't be unrung. What ha

Posted by the_spiral on 2015-08-30 01:35:22

Test scores are higher - but the charter schools are weeding out low performing kids. They are keeping out special education kids which lower the scores. They are rigging the system to look good. Anywhere that charter schools exist, the public schools get those kids who couldn't make it or were rejected by the charter schools. I don't know how things are working in New Orleans, but around the country for-profit charter schools are running into all kinds of problems. Education should not be a money-making venture. In Kansas charter schools are pretty tightly controlled but we are now awarding tax breaks to corporations who give scholarships for private schools, most of which are religious. All of this, while cutting funds to public education. Lawsuits to follow.

Posted by Kathy Saving on 2015-08-29 23:51:23

I hear you. What drew me to this story was the civil rights complaint, which I heard about back in 2013, and I followed the story until I was able to get down there myself. (I paid my own way to New Orleans before I was able to get any publication or granting agency interested in the story that I thought was important...I do freelance journalism for many reasons, but believe me, it's not the paycheque!) This is one piece of the truth, certainly not the whole truth, but a piece of the narrative that I saw under-reported. I have a lot of respect for the people of New Orleans who are making things better. Thanks for reading, and thanks for your comments. I do read them, always with the intention of how to bring more care and compassion and nuance to my reporting.

Posted by Colleen Kimmett on 2015-08-29 21:56:26

I don't know why people don't listen to these statistics; charter schools are a failure in Florida despite receiving MORE money from our taxes and still this illusion persists

Posted by Michael Grim on 2015-08-29 19:11:41

The widely cited graduation rate increase is not true and the State DOE is well aware of this. Before RSD if a student just disappeared from the school it was coded as a drop out. Now, since so much importance is placed on it, they code it as a transfer. The state recognized this and started an auditing program. However, after early audits of randomly selected cases showed massive error, the DOE stopped all audits. They could not have the true graduation rates made public because it would highlight the massive failure which they are responsible for.

Posted by Mike Waldon on 2015-08-29 13:39:33

Wow. What a poor piece of journalism and writing. It's a detriment to the incredibly complex and nuanced conversation about education to have a report that reduces ideas and issues to a series of hand-picked reports with favorable percentages and cobbled-together quotes to include a "human" element. Activist journalism is necessary but only when you allow a reader to engage with the complexity of the issue and not to force feed it.

Posted by Pat on 2015-08-29 09:05:38

Thought so.

Posted by the_spiral on 2015-08-29 06:12:17

Nope. Next question?

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There worst thing about all this. The highest performing kids will end up in learning hell. Nothing to inspire, to seek more knowledge, everything down to you now enough for good test scores so shut up or we will throw you out. A system run in an commericial sense to generate the greatest possible profit and the children are just an annoying cost centre.

Posted by rtb61 on 2015-08-29 01:24:01

Are you a white person who just moved here?

Posted by Josh on 2015-08-28 22:21:57

What's your excuse for being so ignorant?

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 21:36:25

Do you live in New Orleans? Were you part of the Katrina recovery effort, and did you see how the reforms actually played out on the ground? Do you have any children in the former or current school system, or have you taught there or visited any of the schools? Just curious.

Posted by the_spiral on 2015-08-28 19:40:32

No, it isn't a matter of choice--it is a matter of the hedge fund managers deciding they want them some of that edimication budget. We have school 'choice' in Indiana. Every boo-boo cult who wants to start a bible school gets state funds. And no where can you find charters performing better than public schools except in a few instances. Generally, charter schools performed worse than the public schools. But don't take my word for it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 18:43:53

Don't have any kids, do you?

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 18:37:12

You're dreaming. Charter schools are virtually unregulated, they don't have to show how they spend their money, and are costing much more than the old public school union employee models. Why? Because they are hiring crappy, inexperienced teachers and passing this 'saving' on to their shareholders.

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 18:36:44

It also states, that no matter how crappy the public schools were, they were performing better than the charters.

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 18:34:38

AND this model is the ideal for Arnie Duncan, Obama's education secretary. Arnie Duncan's claim to fame was putting military academies in poor high schools and touting the 'success' of the military model. We are moving toward the military being the only way you can afford higher education, and is completely bi-partisan.

Posted by girlcousin on 2015-08-28 18:33:22

Yes, exactly. I think the article raises some extremely important and troubling equity concerns existent in the current system. These concerns must be kept in the spotlight until they are dealt with. But it undermines its message with the screaming "FAILURE" headline, which not only insults all the parents, teachers, administrators and students who've worked *extremely* hard over the past decade to re-establish a sense of normalcy after a horrifying academic disruption, but also contributes to all the polemic policy narratives that have turned this discussion into a bunch of adults using the press to scream at each other.

Posted by the_spiral on 2015-08-28 16:52:30

I think when you compare public schools to charter schools, it's a toss up. Charter schools perform better at some things, public schools better at others.

The real issue here is school choice, let parents decide what schools they want their children going to.

Posted by Steve Meyers on 2015-08-28 14:31:52

How dare they expect the kids to sit up straight, raise their hands to speak, and behave appropriately in school? I can understand why their parents are upset - the parents are the problem.

Posted by erock68la on 2015-08-28 14:19:09

I understand the concerns parents have, but to call the system a "failure" is extreme. Essentially the issue is certain schools abusing their power, the lack of African-American presence in faculty/leadership, and that old traditional methods (which WEREN'T WORKING) were tossed to the wayside. The article itself notes that graduation rates and percentage of students passing the state exams have improved dramatically. I feel like the system should be tweaked to address these concerns (particularly high teacher turnover), but to dismiss it as simply a "failure" when it clearly isn't exposes the site's agenda.